VIDEO: MOVIE: REVIEW: The Three Stooges (2012) [The 3 Stooges remake]

5/5 stars, 9/10 from both of us.

Native rating was much lower: 5.3/10, 3.5/5 stars (3.7 Netflix-guess for us).

This is THE surprise of the year for us.

Two conditions helped create this situation:
1) We lack the hate everyone else has for remakes. Remakes are a way to get more, a way to see things through another view point. They’re no more objectionable than cover songs (and I own many tributes albums).
2) We love the Three Stooges. Even Carolyn. Yes. She’s a girl who loves Three Stooges.

It helps that this was by “Made In Georgia” (georgia.org). That explains the level of awesome here.  They also did American Reunion, Archer, Zombieland, The Walking Dead, Ugly Americans, Wanderlust, Footloose (remake), Due Date, Dumb And Dumberer, Road Trip, Ron Ronnie Run, Scream 2, Camilla, The Signal, & Contagion.

But to be fair, they also did X-Men:The Last Stand, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, and Van Wilder 3 (which I think is actually #0, the prequel)..
Our first thought was: LOW expectations, this is going to be awful, especially the actor they picked for Moe.

BUT WAIT! LARRY DAVID as Sister Mary-Mengele, the bitchy nun?

Ridiculously-hot Sophia Vergara as the main female character?

Brian Doyle-Murray (Captain K’Nuckles from Flapjack, also in Motorcity) — finally getting to see his face after hearing all of his voice work.

The Jersey Shore cast? ANOTHER UNEXPECTED! They actually made the movie better!. Seriously — who the fuck could predict this shit in a million years? The main way they make it get better is you get to see Moe slap the shit out of all the annoying Jersey Shore people.

We had thought slapstick was pretty much bottomed out by these guys, sent off to die in a manner similar to the demise of vaudeville & the like. Glad to see it can still be done, and done well.

The backstory of them as babies & as 10 year olds was great!

The orphanage plot that drove the movie may as well have been straight out of the Nintendo game (which I loved, and was one of my favorite Nintendo games as a teen, and it had speech, which was rare for Nintendo).

All in all, it was extremely faithful to the original, and every bit as funny. And it was updated to the modern era without the many sacrifices that often happen when this is done (for example with the 2012ish Smurfs movie).

The only other person we know who saw this also agrees: It’s the funniest movie this year besides Wanderlust. Yes, I laughed way harder than during American Reunion, which was also great.

Go figure. SURPRISE OF THE YEAR.

LINK URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383010/